#pokefic pitch

[nemesis-is-my-middle-name]

pla setting swap au where the protagonist and ingo’s situations are actually not unique or notable at all bc the entire population of hisui is made up of people with amnesia who got wormhole’d there

[nemesis-is-my-middle-name]

au in my head where the travelers' return from hisui is the classic portal fantasy "as if nothing ever happened at all" where they come back at basically the same time they left, returned to the selves they were at the moment they were taken, and protag goes through the standard "i tried to tell my family and they didn't believe me/they wouldn't believe me if i did tell them, so i'll just hug them and say i love them and go on carrying this secret experience with me while they go 'huh wonder what that was about'," ingo gets home and without hesitation goes "emmet you will not fucking BELIEVE the day i've had"

[nemesis-is-my-middle-name]

was thinking abt that thing from a lil while ago where arceus cuts ingo's heart out, to spare him having to be sad about his former life. and then also got to thinking abt that thing i briefly mentioned a WHILE ago which is the idea that the reason ingo has no apparent language barrier w/ hisui is that uxie hotswapped his language from unova's to hisui's rq while he was falling as like a "sorry about your memories" consolation prize. and abt how, despite the very silly way i phrased that, that is actually like a supremely fucked up thing to do to a person and i would also consider it metaphysical violence on some level.

so anyway like. alt version where instead of it being arceus, it gets the whole lake trio in on it. mesprit takes out his heart, uxie takes out his tongue

[nemesis-is-my-middle-name]

aaaah. man. anyone remember that discussion a while back abt how ingo and h.zor have a lot in common actually.

like, i think it'd make total sense actually for him to become a zorua were he to die on mount coronet rather than being found by the pearl clan. but at the same time, i also think it might make sense for him to not become a hostile one. because h.zorua/zoroark are broadly said to be unilaterally malicious towards humans, but they're also the product of a terminal abandonment by the world, and their malice comes from resentment over that fate. and ingo... was abandoned on mount coronet, in a sense. lost and alone completely removed from anything he could call a home or that held any safety or comfort.

but unlike the zorua in canon, it wasn't an abandonment with a face to it? there was no direct hatred or fear, nothing said begone, monster, etc. he might not even remember why it happened. all he knows is he's suddenly alone.

so like. malice. possibly? but it can't really be a resentment specifically towards humans, can it, so much as it would be just a general grudge against the universe. and that's if it exists at all and he isn't just sort of... constantly mourning himself, which is the other option.

alternately: he retains knowledge of how it happened somehow, and reincarnates as a zorua who doesn't hate people but really really specifically wants to fucking kill god. that would be fun.

[nemesis-is-my-middle-name]

actually what i think would be fun is if ingo and emmet were both some kind of like, sun/light mage but they went in wildly different directions with it. like if light in this fantasy world is the expression of both truth and ideals—which i think is very appropriate, you've got this connotation of "guiding light" and simultaneously "cast light on" as a force to expose secrets—almost like sunlight vs moonlight or something. anyway.

i love when a school of magic is extremely versatile so i think light should be that. light as healing magic is classical, that's one of ingo's strong suits. and then like, compelling the truth, from people or objects. speak with dead? mind reading? cast the light and see what it reveals. i think they're both good at that. and then if ingo's the better healer, on emmet's side you've got lightning and fire, that kind of thing, light as a force that damages. but i think if both of those are their own subdomains, pure light on the offensive is like.

i mean it's pure, both lightning and fire are already such powerful runaway forces, light when it isn't diluted in the slightest- it wants to get out. light wants to shine and burn and immolate, if you tell it to harm instead of heal it wants to destroy. so many light mages are healers not because that's what the element lends itself to necessarily, but rather because light is simply so overwhelming that it's easier to use those healing spells—and even then, most people prefer like, green magic for that, only using light on things that aren't alive, most people reserve light healing for like, resurrection, or something else that requires some juice, because if you're just trying to mend a wound it's so easy to go overboard. it's a mistake most people only take the risk on once.

and then these two are like. just wielding it like it's nbd. pure light magic in both the helpful and harmful aspects is fucking terrifying to anyone who's savvy enough in magic to understand what they're doing. but their control over it is so perfect it's almost surgical. by all rights the kinds of spells emmet casts should completely burn away his opponent and him, but he doesn't even have to do permanent damage if he doesn't want to. what the fuck.

...anyone else getting me here

[nemesis-is-my-middle-name]

And when they're so unnaturally perfect at beating the monstrously powerful nobles, well, is it any wonder that Kamado starts to look at them and question? With every passing noble, with every report of how bizarrely easy the protag defeated them, it looks more and more suspicious. They're supposedly 15, and yet they breeze through fights with some of the most powerful Pokémon in Hisui? That's weird, especially in top of all their other weirdness. It's unnatural. It looks like they're cheating, like they know the secret code to beating these things... or maybe like they're the ones controlling it, so of course nothing ever hits them. He wants the frenzies quelled so he keeps sending them, but he doesn't trust them and when the red sky comes, he knows the protag is capable of dangerous, impossible things. Even when he attempts to apologize, in the back of his mind he feels the hair raising, insidious fear linger. That kid's not right. It probably isn't even a kid. And now he knows it can even control gods.

Oh god, that's horrifying. The idea that whenever they get just a bit too hurt than they think the Galaxy Team will allow, they just give up and let whatever it is kill them. Or if it's from fall damage and they break a leg, they hobble to the nearest aggressive Pokémon, gritting their teeth through the agony because they know it'll all be over soon. That's just. Wow. How messed up is their sense of self-preservation by the time they get to Ingo, if for months they've made the choice to die over things that wouldn't kill them, because until that point they didn't think it affected anyone but them and dying was faster and less painful than waiting to heal? How do you even begin to explain that to the person whose life you're ruining every time you do that?

And even if they did manage to tell him, or warn him, you're right that he's not just going to be okay with them dying over and over, for any reason. I think the only two options at that point are let Ingo help them fight the rest of the nobles and later the frenzied god, or hope that he becomes too dissociated to do much of anything and try to get it over quick. Yeah this kid has maybe permanently fucked him up, but there's no way he's just going to let them keep doing it alone, and if they try to sneak out to do it alone they better hope they get a great run on the first attempt because he's gonna notice the day resetting.

For bonus fridge horror from the protag, if you combine the two time loop ideas, at some point after they get home they learn that it wasn't just Ingo they were taking for a ride over and over, Emmet was getting yanked back too. In Emmet's case, on one hand it's a relief to know that it wasn't because his brother was dying twenty times in a row at multiple points over the past however long, but on the other, it's not a comfort at all to know it was instead a child who was dying that whole time

re: technically-unnecessary deaths, also on my mind: aren't there some things in the main story of pla that could theoretically be avoided, or done better, if you had the power of foresight and the ability to actually effect change? like growlithe's kidnapping, it works out fine in the end, but if the protag doesn't know that, just knows that palina's distraught and these bandits have some unspecified nefarious scheme involving the pup... what's the better way, chasing after them to firespit island and maybe being too late to stop whatever's going to happen... or excusing yourself for a moment, throwing yourself at the nearest alpha, and coming back prepared to stop it ever happening in the first place? or arezu's hiding lilligant's frenzy, trying to do everything herself and getting hurt for it. hell, even before you properly start the noble questline, there's all those people who get mortally wounded and possibly die trying to fight kleavor. if only protag could make it there before they do, that would be so many people saved. and if they're better, if they're faster, they could make it to the mirelands before ursaluna even gets pseudo-frenzied by lilligant. how perfect is good enough? when can they decide to settle for it?

...but of course, the more they use that knowledge, these things they shouldn't be able to know, the more suspicious kamado gets. the more suspicious everyone gets, really. sure, they saved the day and all, but how did they even know the day needed saving? suddenly kamado's claims that they're somehow linked to or causing the rift don't seem nearly so far-fetched, because if they weren't causing it, how could they predict it with such ease? it's a pretty delicate balancing act they've gotta do. not to mention that if it is only the single day they can reset over, there are gonna be some things that they can't go back and fix because it happened too long ago. which with the rest of everything, i feel would just add to their guilt and their determination to make every day count, make it perfect. i can imagine a really fucked up scenario of them essentially arguing/bargaining with ingo to be allowed to die, because no really, this time is important enough. this time i really do need to try again.

and also, how bad would it fuck you up mentally if not only did you have to die over and over and over—but you were also conditioning yourself that pain means death, always. that it doesn't matter if you escape with your life—all that means is you have to finish the job by yourself. would they stop fearing any kind of injury? or do they become incredibly phobic of it? or does it vary depending on the day. or on the scenario. they go into noble fights expecting to die, but are reflexively terrified of banal survey work because worse than dying, what if something breaks their leg but doesn't kill them? they tell ingo they're used to it. never mind that's not always true. it should be. it's only their fault it isn't-

and then if emmet's also experiencing this?? and also has NO explanation as to why?? and at least i imagine with ingo his day-to-day is already repetitive enough that he can sometimes just not look at the date and pretend everything's proceeding normally (not that ingo's situation is actually any better, it just sucks differently and is easier to dissociate your way through.) with emmet there's really no way for him to not be conscious of the fact that he's done fifty goddamn tuesdays in a row. boss emmet has suddenly become really inconsistent about showing up to work, which is very unusual, and everyone figures it's bc of ingo disappearing, but actually it's bc this is July 18th #108 (protag was fighting lilligant and she was really hard) and he has no way of knowing whether there's gonna be a #109 or not, and he's so fucking sick of fixing the same three problems over and over so he is Taking The Day Off. bye. by the way the fault you're running into is with the battery, and you should put two extra people on red line because there's going to be a bigger than anticipated crowd. ok, bye, he's going to chargestone cave to scream now.

[nemesis-is-my-middle-name]

Fic title: Skip and Twist and Then (Home Again)

(send a title and i’ll tell you the fic i would write for it)

home again (and again, and again, and again.)

the trouble being it's hard to stop when you don't know your destination. ingo is not the first to be a victim of the hisuian gods' lack of understanding of humanity—although, first and last have very little meaning now anyway, and maybe he was the first, for some definition of first, because it seems they were... gentler? with the others. most of them, it seems, eventually recall where they're meant to be, in some fashion or another. most of them.

so the gods of creation, they'd be happy to send him back, but they don't exactly keep diligent records. if he doesn't know, then neither do they, and... he doesn't.

for all his trying, the only thing he half-remembers is that he was... a guide? of some sort? although that's an imperfect term for it. he was more there for the journey than the destination, he thinks. (there's a word on the tip of his tongue, but he can never quite catch it before it vanishes again.)

so in lieu of actually returning him, they give him that.

he is the guide to travelers. rather than risk doing any further damage with their indelicate powers of reality, the gods send wayward souls to him, and he takes them home. the hope being that one day, one of them will happen to match up with his true destination, and he'll be able to return home himself. though, in more practical terms, he's also quite happy to help the others regardless. it feels good to be useful, especially when he empathizes so keenly with them.

since he doesn't remember much besides the idea of the job, the form of this travel is malleable. sometimes it's a road, although not frequently, for some reason. most often it is some form of boat, which doesn't faze him as much as it should considering he's fairly certain he didn't know how to sail before. but no matter what form it takes, there's always that vague sense of recognition as soon as he sees it. languages, too, come and go as they're needed. he's always able to converse with the travelers, enough to get the job done, anyway, and then the sounds fade into vague shapes when the next one comes.

which is all. useful. in the short term. but he wouldn't be lying if there wasn't an accompanying feeling of concern, when he thought about it for too long. if it's so easy for them to change what he knows, how does he know what little he remembers was ever actually reliable in the first place? how much of it has been written over, with all of these journeys coming to take its place?

if he did find home, would he even recognize it?

[nemesis-is-my-middle-name]

rotating some kind of. combination au version of that old thing where arceus/the lake trio do some back alley organ theft on ingo to make him better suited to the Task they're giving him. combined with a lake guardian akari au. combined with a tao trio champion ingo.

the basic thought is that ingo isn't exactly the protagonist, but rather, he was meant to be the new lake guardian's teacher. since humans are adept at dealing with their own spirit, the lake guardian should learn from them to not pull a repeat of giratina's falling apart. and ingo's ideal for this task, as a champion of zekrom/reshiram, one of the most human-spirit-centric deities around. so he was taken and dumped in the galaxy team to basically await the protagonist's imminent arrival.

[nemesis-is-my-middle-name]

"but shouldn't pure light be an arceus thing not a tao duo thing" no no no see. arceus is represented as a bright light in pla but that's only scratching the surface, arceus in pokemon proper is the embodiment of types as a global concept, arceus magic in a mage setting should be almost type-neutral. weaving elements from all into itself, incredibly difficult to break into let alone master. meanwhile giratina is antimagic. sinnoh's shadow, magic negation.

[nemesis-is-my-middle-name]

anyway this is a complete topic jump but do you think melli has just had to get used to the fact that his fellow highlands warden will NOT leave him alone. ingo does not know how to handle being so goddamn isolated and like. he loves his team but they are. pokemon. he needs to have actual conversations or he'll lose it even more than he already has. and sure, he does go back up to the pearl settlement (or down to jubilife once it exists) sometimes, and that's great he loves that, but he can't really make an excuse to do that every single day when most of his duties involve being in the highlands. so: showing up at moonview just to talk at melli. whether he wants it or not

[nemesis-is-my-middle-name]

ok that's three different security corps members who have specifically told the protag they should be in the security corps instead of survey, they'd be so useful, so new fic pitch,

[nemesis-is-my-middle-name]

Giratina is often said to be Arceus' last child. By extension, this must make Palkia and Dialga the first and second.

Herein arises a problem, a longstanding debate, and its eventual resolution. Neither time nor space can be said to be greater or more important than the other; therefore, the two are held to be twins.

---

Volo's plan is quite simple. The meddling of Sinnoh's lesser servants cannot be tolerated. They must be dealt with somehow. And he knows of no limiter more effective—no chains more tightly binding, no prison more perfectly restrictive—than a human body.

The Pearl Clan's newest visitor—Ingo, if that is his name, though there's always that lingering uncertainty about it—he isn't sure how to answer any other questions about himself, either. His knowledge of Hisui is too strangely absolute for a newcomer. It suggests long familiarity with the territory—but if that's the case, why does nobody else in the region recognize him?

Irida presents the Lustrous to him, once, as is tradition.

It is agony.

Just standing in its presence is a pressure like the bottom of the deepest ocean, like a singular force bearing down on him without mercy. To touch it is—he suddenly feels as though his body cannot possibly contain him, like something is pulling him to pieces—the light of the pearl is blinding—

To provoke a reaction from Sinnoh's treasure is a sign of divine recognition. It usually isn't... like... that. But still, if you ignore that discrepancy—and the Pearl Clan is nothing if not good at ignoring discrepancies—it can only mean good things for a warden. Right?

---

Deities move on a glacial scale, or so it seems at times to humans. Nevertheless, imprisoning a god—binding it to a human form to prevent its intervention—cannot be without consequence. Nor will it go unnoticed by its fellows.

It takes Hisui a long time to notice, but reality has... gone strange. Eroded. The seas stretch on endlessly. Mount Coronet is a spear against a yawning void. The winter has become eternal; days are short and nights are long, and the more time passes—though perhaps that phrase is not so apt—the less rhyme or reason there is to the changing of the celestial bodies.

And far beyond, in a realm above both time and space, a once-dual, now-singular god rages...

[nemesis-is-my-middle-name]

au where. whkjwhwjh this sounds like a bit but i'm actually being very serious. au where arceus was, in fact, being totally legit with the task it gave you, and the nobles being frenzied doesn't happen and everything just sorta. continues per usual. plus one protag helping with the dex.

[nemesis-is-my-middle-name]

mmmm thinking about... every element having a variety of expressions. thinking about an aesthetic of handedness, w/ certain expressions of each element being sinister and others being dexter, while the "root" of it can be used with either. this is also me thinking abt the aesthetics of mages having physical signs of their magic use, that grow and deepen as they become more proficient in casting. marks on their hands and arms. this would probably be agnostic to the mage's usual dominant hand, or maybe it's even that a right-handed mage who focuses mostly on sinister magic will become left-handed over time. ambidexterity is almost as rare in magic as it is irl, since it's usually difficult to be truly equally good at both kinds.

this is working backwards from the typical positioning of the twins wrt each other but i think dexter magic tends to be predominantly active, easily weaponized, very direct. conversely sinister magic is gentler, more easily used subtly for healing or manipulation. or possibly it's the other way round! i'm thinking of it as them casting with their 'free' hand since emmet seems to generally stand to ingo's right, but the thing is they do quite a lot, maybe even most? of their gesturing with the hand closest to the other, so it might be the inverse.

i also do really like the "one giant adventuring party" idea i pitched a lil while ago bc i think that's fun. with protag as the sort of nominal party leader, who is in a sort of weird position of being a very powerful mage who has no idea how to do magic. it's immediately visible from looking at them bc both arms are covered in glowing rainbow swirls, suggesting near-perfect ambidexterity in apparently every magical class, but every time they cast a new spell they're just as surprised by it as everyone else. and their giant party of mostly mages and then 1 or 2 physical fighters (someone pls help me balance teamcomp my squad is dying) is also there trying to help them learn how to actually. do magic not by accident.

[nemesis-is-my-middle-name]

an ingo in this 'verse who still gets Taken and is promptly forbidden from using magic because. yknow. most of hisui is not crazy fond of the idea of playing catch with high explosives and that's basically what they think he's doing

[nemesis-is-my-middle-name]

we joked earlier about "lol protag only eats one meal a week when they sit down for potato mochi" but like... in timeloop au, legitimately. for both of them. what's the point in bothering to eat as often as you're "supposed to" knowing you might die/everything might randomly reboot and it was absolutely pointless. that's if you can even keep track of meals between loops that actually happened. protag might legitimately only eat when someone else makes them do it.